


halfway to your heart (starting from your knees)

by scarredsodeep



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Attempted Seduction, Because of the way your stomach drops when you look at your best friend, Best Friends, Cameras, Dick Pics, Feeling like a predator, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Gay monstrosity feels, Humor, M/M, Masturbation, Normal Bro Stuff, Pre-Hiatus (Fall Out Boy), Sex, Tales from 2004, everyone communicates directly in this one because I owe you guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 09:14:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14713286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/pseuds/scarredsodeep
Summary: Pete's tried every way he can think of to seduce Patrick Stump. Soliciting artistic feedback on his dick pics seem like the obvious next step.





	halfway to your heart (starting from your knees)

**Author's Note:**

> I’m posting this to say: HAPPY FIC-AVERSARY TO ME! But mostly, louder: thank you.
> 
> You’re on my blog; you’re in my life; you guys are amazing. 
> 
> I’m so glad I’ve met you in this fandom, written with you and challenged with you, read you and been translated by you. I hope to meet more of you still. You guys make me cry over breakfast and ruin my eyeliner before I even leave the house all the damn time, with your messages on AO3 and tumblr, with your enthusiasm and your support. Thank you, FOB fandom, for giving me a home.
> 
> 239,951 words. That’s more than last year. That’s longer than any volume of Harry Potter and it’s got Dostoyevsky smoked. That even exceeds the length of Moby Dick. (Sorry, I couldn’t do this without mentioning dick length.) That’s 15 unique and ridiculous fics. That’s how much Peterick fanfic I’ve published since this day last May, my official fandom anniversary.
> 
> This year I wrote Girl Out Boy, the single most important thing I’ve ever created, a story you have told me touched you too—messages that are the reason I do this queer, glorious, stupid thing I’m doing. This year MANIA came out and everything we believed about tryst theory and religious blowjobs changed for the better. This year I wrote two fairy tales, 5 smut fics (including one about Michael Day??? AND ONE ABOUT BRENDON URIE??? I’m too impressionable, you guys are corrupting me), 2 holiday fluff fics, fake dating, summer boyfriends, The Angstiest of All Possible Universes, the kissventures of queerplatonic Joe Troh Band Ho, and two challenge pieces for the Fic Against Fascism charity drive. I wrote more oral sex than should be tabulated, honestly. I wrote about an amazing nonbinary character and I hope to write many more. I wrote the poly happy ending I really do believe we all deserve. I’ve made so many playlists, even more moodboards. Two FOBabies have been born. Our boys went on an amazing world tour to support a beautiful, bright purple album. We got new singles, new videos, new merch, a whole album of tight, brutal-good songs. I changed cities, changed jobs, ended a relationship, started a new one. (But I still have the same haircut. Help.) It’s been a big year for me, guys. I bet it’s been a big year for you too.
> 
> Here’s to us, youngbloods! And many thousand words more.
> 
> Follow me on tumblr @shark-myths and stay tuned for more conspiracy theories and angsty fic where no one communicates but I make up for it with jokes. What would you like to see me write in Year 3?

 

Somehow, Patrick Stump finds himself flipping between two pictures of his best friend’s dick. Pete’s phone sweaty in his palm, Pete’s eyes intent on his face. _Be normal_ , Patrick tells himself desperately. _Don’t make this weird._

This is all part of normal bro-ship. Just guys being dudes. He’s the one with the problem, the one _making this a problem_. If wingmanning includes helping Pete craft the perfect sexy picture to send to the girl he’s dating long-distance, that’s what Patrick will do. It’s just that his guidebook to male friendship was missing the page on what you’re supposed to do with your heterosexual face while helping your buddy choose nudes. A good friend would be able to do this without getting aroused, so that’s what Patrick pretends to be: a good friend and not a pervert.

“Which is better? One or two?” Pete prompts. Pete is wearing the same dark jeans and tight pink t-shirt that Patrick can see the edge of in the picture. He is achingly aware of the fact that Pete had his hard dick in his own hand minutes ago, just on the other side of the wall.

“Feel like I’m at the optometrist,” Patrick says, because this seems like a normal, nonsexual, best friend thing to say. “Uh, one, I guess. The lighting is better.”

It’s amazing his mouth works for anything at all, other than producing saliva and ragged breaths. In the picture, Pete’s familiar hand is fisted around an unfamiliar but oft-imagined piece of his anatomy. His flat belly is dark with his bartskull tattoo and shaved of pubic hair. His dick is—it’s—it’s a nice dick. Fat and red in his hand. Thick like wanting. Patrick is going to pass out if he doesn’t remember how to inhale soon.

“The _lighting_? It’s not for an art gallery,” laughs Pete. “Whole different kind of exhibition. Which one is, you know, hotter? Which one is sexier to you?”

That’s it. Normal thoughts, normal thoughts. Be a friend for once in your life, Patrick. Be a motherfucking _pal_. Patrick pushes the phone and its graven images back into Pete’s hands. He is careful not to touch Pete’s electric self-stimulating skin. “The first one,” he says. Does his voice sound as obviously weird to Pete as it does to his own ears? “I guess. But that’s not—uh—it’s not what I’m into.”

“One it is. Thanks, babe,” Pete says. Patrick can’t handle his puppy dog sincerity. Or the nickname ‘babe.’ He excuses himself, ducking into the bathroom of their shitty hotel room, and submerges his face in the sink. There’s not enough time to get himself off without being suspicious, so he tries low-key drowning himself in the sink. Eventually, the chill of the water makes his blood redistribute. The last thing he needs as a formal dick pic consultant is to get caught with a boner about his best friend. _Normal friendship,_ he reminds himself. _This is part of normal friendship_.

This shouldn’t even be a problem. How sick is he?

*

Turns out Patrick really is very heterosexual.

Pete Wentz has known Patrick is his soulmate for three years, now, and he’s pretty much run through every flirting technique he knows in that time. Overt declarations of affection and love, onstage, online, and in person; physical gestures and invitations, from snuggling to hand-holding to neck-kissing; pranks; bed-sharing and lap-stealing; personal gifts (favorite candy bars, expensive guitar strings, an aquamarine yoyo—anything that makes him think of Patrick at the same time he has a little bit of cash); love songs for Patrick to sing to himself; lewd jokes and salacious overtures. He’s tried _everything_.

Now he’s trying dick pics.

If Patrick ever expressed _dis_ interest, Pete would just stop. But Patrick expresses confusing things instead. For example, he blushes obscene shades of pink. He makes comments that can be construed as flirtatious, says things to journalists like _I’d marry Pete because I think he’d be a good provider_ . Patrick looks straight into Pete’s eyes, lips parted breathing, when Pete leans heavy and sweaty against him on stage. Patrick says things like _I can’t imagine my life without you_ and _do you ever think about how the title ‘best friend’ is just really inadequate?_ Patrick sings Pete’s dirtiest, most devoted lyrics without even blinking, his cheeks flushed with exertion, his body damp with sweat, his face sincere and fucking angelic.

Patrick never, ever recoils when Pete mouths wet, longing kisses into the heat of his neck. Sometimes, it seems like he even leans into them.

Patrick never says yes. He never says no, either.

So really. What was Pete _supposed_ to do? Dick pics: they are really his only option.

The thing is, Patrick’s not responding to the pictures. Like, at _all_. Pete tries on four separate occasions. Flatline. The heart rate monitor might as well be disconnected.

Will Pete finally be forced to accept that Patrick just… isn’t into him?

He looks over at his friend, snoring open-mouthed against the window of Joe’s van. Their song is on the radio, their record flying off the shelves of stores, but the cash flow theoretically associated with fame and fortune hasn’t really trickled down to them yet. They’re blowing up on a national scale and unable to fill their gas tank on a daily one. Kids across the country know Pete’s name, and Patrick is the only person in the world Pete wants to hear say it.

No, Pete’s not giving up. Not yet. Not when he can still escalate.

*

Another night, another city. In this one, Pete calls from the next room, “Hey, Pattycake? Can you come in here a sec? I need help.”

Always an ominous request, coming from a bathroom, even if Patrick _hadn’t_ been present for/permanently scarred by the 2003 gas station wet burrito incident. So he’s expecting all manner of traumatizing sights when he walks in there.

He’s not expecting Pete’s abs. Pete’s t-shirt hem tucked under his chin, his hair tousled and falling in his eyes, his jeans unzipped, his hand stuffed in the front of his briefs, his thumb curling to frame his bartskull tattoo, and his cell phone held out in offering towards the door.

Patrick blinks out of existence on the threshold of the bathroom.

“Help me with staging?” Pete asks.

Patrick—Patrick does not even know what that _means._ They’re in the middle of fucking Kansas and he is officially living his nightmare. Pete’s hand rummages deep in his underwear; before he can think, Survival Mode Patrick barks, “If you pull your dick out right now, I quit the band.”

Pete offers his outstretched phone to Patrick. “Here, then. Tell me what to do. Make me sexy.”

There are so many possible responses to this, and Patrick can’t shape his mouth around a single one. The crucial thing here is that Patrick doesn’t say _you’re already sexy_ , because he is being called upon by a dude friend, and if he reveals himself for the thirsting pervert he really is, the trust loss will be catastrophic.

Would Pete stop being his friend entirely? Patrick thinks about how loyal Pete is. No, probably not, even if he found out— _and how would he ever find this out_ —Patrick gets off, sometimes, thinking about him. About Pete’s lips against his neck onstage, Pete on his knees with his head pressed against Patrick’s thigh, Pete on his back with his bass slung across his jutting hips like a strange stringed lover. Patrick gets off sometimes just thinking about Pete slumped against his shoulder, drooling in his sleep and leaving little saliva crusts on Patrick’s hoodie, while the van rolls back and forth through the midwest, hills and cornfields, small towns and countrysides, jewel-bright beacons of cities that wish they were somewhere else.

Their friendship might not stop, but the snuggling surely would. The wrestling for dominance over some petty thing across motel bedspreads. The sloppy, para-sexual onstage affection. The bursting into the bathroom with unresolved band conflicts while Patrick showers, startling him so bad he gets shampoo in his eyes. Every casual touch, all those gestures that have become so hopelessly charged for Patrick, would wither and recoil, leaving—distance. An emotional moat around Patrick, recognizing him for the sick crocodile-infested water he knows himself to be. He would ache, alone in the center of the space his grossed-out friends left him in. Like Grendel, like Frankenstein’s monster, fuck, even like Dracula—like every great monster of lore, he would be so _lonesome_.

The thing is, Patrick doesn’t _deserve_ Pete’s friendship. Not if he’s going to be a fucking creep about it. But Pete doesn’t know that. Pete must never know that.

So Patrick takes the cameraphone out of Pete’s hand and frames Pete’s torturous image within its lens.

He can’t believe he’s saying these words out loud, really he cannot. But his mouth opens and out comes the suggestion, “Maybe if you showed a little bit of cheek…?”

*

Pete can’t believe how normal and solemn and nonsexual the whole thing is. Not that hotel bathrooms are the pinnacle of sexiness, but, well—they’re _kind of_ the pinnacle of sexiness. A certain seedy kind of sexiness. Like, a lot of people fuck in showers that aren’t their own. A lot of naked randos have overflowed this bathtub. He’s assuming. It’s a nicer bathroom than in the kind of hotel they used to stay in, before _Sugar_ caught the airwaves and made them a minor-but-urgent success. The kind of bathroom they’re used to, you don’t have to make assumptions about who fucked in there. You could probably carbon-date the last person to contract hepatitis by taking a sample of the scuzz in the shower grout.

Pete’s holding his own penis inside his pants, squeezing back against its unmistakable excitement. Patrick is taking indiscreet photos like they’re in someone’s grunge-glitter L.A. fantasy. He can’t believe he’s thinking about shower grout.

It’s a survival mechanism, probably: because if he allows himself to think about what’s actually happening right now, what ridiculous thing _he caused to happen_ , Pete will explode. Like, figuratively, sure, but also literally, out the dick. Because—this is hot. Patrick offers direction, posing Pete in ways he apparently finds sexy, and snaps photos; Pete squeezes himself, lets his mouth go soft, lets his eyes lose focus. Patrick isn’t into it the way he is. Pete knows that. But he lets himself enjoy it anyway.

*

If Pete’s eyelashes flutter one more time, Patrick is going to literally fucking die.

*

“Yeah, like that,” Patrick’s saying, and is it just Pete, or is there a catch in Patrick’s voice? Pete’s eyes close, his hips rolling softly against the pressure of his own fucked fist. He stuffs his shirt under his chin so he can use his hand to stroke his own belly, fingertips playing through the trail of hair, seek the sensation of his own erect nipple, just feel and feel and feel—

“Fuck, Pete,” Patrick’s saying, and this time there is definitely a catch. Pete flicks one crocodile eye open, sees his friend flushed pink, his plump lip bitten tellingly between teeth, his chest seething with quick breath. Patrick’s shifting sea glass eyes lock onto Pete’s gold one, and his face blanches. They freeze, and Pete thinks Patrick’s onto him, Patrick knows he’s rubbing himself inside his unbuttoned jeans for more than just the ostensible photographs, knows there’s more afoot here than the long-distance seduction of a fictional girl—

“Ihavetogo,” Patrick’s saying, and he turns and flees the bathroom, leaving Pete’s hands too full of himself to follow, clutching Pete’s phone like it’s burned into his fist, running running running, not looking back.

*

Patrick drops Pete’s phone on the nearest hotel bed, realizing he still has it. He does not look at the horrifying images he took. _Bro stuff, bro stuff, normal bro stuff,_ he chants to himself. He thinks of how Pete moved, touching himself while Patrick watched, the pleasure that seemed to hold for both of them. He thinks of the girl on the other end of the phone line, the one who is to receive these photos, the one Pete was thinking of while his hands roved and his face changed and his hips moved. He doesn’t think this is normal. He doesn’t think _he_ is normal.

He’s so fucking hard it’s all he can think about. His dick rubbing against the seam of his jeans is unbearable. He’s got to get out of here before he explodes.

*

Pete should go after Patrick. He should follow him and say—something. Apologize, maybe? Yeah, he probably has a few things to apologize for, in this situation as in any other.

But he can still feel the thick honey-slow heat of Patrick’s eyes on him. He can still see Patrick’s parted lips, hear the subtle rush of Patrick’s breath, the tremble in his voice when he said _yeah, turn to the left_ and _like that_ and the little groan as he directed _your hip, put your fingers on your hip, dig in, yes_.

Pete crackles with electricity. He grabs himself rougher than usual, uses the dribbling wet from the head of his dick to slick the length of it, rubs and pulls and squeezes with frantic, mounting rhythm, makes eye contact with himself in the mirror and imagines he’s still being watched by Patrick, and with back-arching, throat-tearing glory, comes at last.

*

Patrick walks briskly through a strange city, heartbeat throbbing low and swollen in the tightness of his guts, and thinks they should probably have a conversation about all this.

 _Ha_. Hilarious. He’d sooner die.

Actually, based on the tight-fist feeling, starving suffocating desperate for destruction, in the spreading nerves of his hot groin? He’ll die _soon_ , and there will be no need for conversation.

*

By the time he staggers out of the bathroom, Patrick is gone. Pete finds his slightly sweaty cell phone on the bed closest to the door. Weak-kneed, he collapses on top of it. He scrolls through the pictures Patrick took and the images of himself make his belly tighten again, because he still vividly see the look on Patrick’s face, his bloodless-tight grip on the phone.

There are a few hours yet til soundcheck. Pete wishes Patrick wanted him, wishes they could spend those hours together, wishes…

Pete’s thumbs hover over the keypad of his phone. Should he send Patrick an apology? Or one of these pictures?

*

If you’re a pervert anyway, Patrick reasons, it’s not like masturbating in the single-stall bathroom at a Borders bookstore is any better or worse than what you were already doing, oozing lecherously and with a slime trail across the profaned face of the earth. Right?

But his body (as usual) won’t cooperate. He has this shrivel-guilt feeling, which is not sufficient to kill his arousal entirely, but keeps undercutting any orgasm he approaches. Patrick does not want to play with edging, by himself, in a Borders bathroom. Patrick just wants to be a normal dude with heterosexual feelings about his best friend who can play their fucking show tonight without getting a woodie onstage. Barring that, he wants to get off, quick and dirty as he is, and put this whole bizarre day behind him.

He’s given up, buttoned his pants over his sad half-hardness, and dutifully washed his hands when his phone buzzes against his thigh. He pulls it out, expecting something from Joe, with whom he is supposed to be hanging out this afternoon. He is totally unprepared to be confronted with one of the pictures he’d taken of Pete.

*

Shirt up, hand grazing belly, tattooed partial sleeve disappearing down tight, low-slung pants. Mouth soft and insouciant, eyes hazed with pleasure and trained not on the camera, but on the face of the boy behind it. It is obvious, looking at this particular picture, who Pete is looking at. Who Pete is touching himself for. What is really going on.

This, and the words _come back to me._

That’s what Pete decides to send.

*

Patrick’s life ends that day in a Borders bathroom. It must. How else but the afterlife to explain what happens next?

When he was taking the pictures, Patrick was looking at Pete. He was blind with looking, shaky and starving, half a breath from lighting himself on fire. The camera he was just—pointing, clicking. He wasn’t making art, wasn’t lining up his shots, wasn’t thinking about color or composition. He was grating out instructions, orders maybe, to pose Pete in the ways of want, and he was staring hard. Staring like into the sun. Staring like absolution could flow down the optic chiasm and stab him through the brain with electricity, with a raw bolt of light. Staring in all the ways he knew he’d never get to touch.

So in a way, even though he was there? This is his first time seeing the picture.

This is his first time seeing how Pete’s looking at him, at _him_ , in the picture.

 _come back to me_ , says the message.

Patrick, bookstore pervert and terrible friend, goes ahead and undoes his pants.

*

It takes aching fucking ages for Patrick to make it back to the hotel. Pete is pent-up desperate by the time he arrives.

Even though he has a key, Patrick knocks like a penitent, like a supplicant. Pete opens the door and lets him in. They stand before each other awkward and strained. Pete’s skin twitches over his blood, like one or the other is going to jump off.

“There’s not a girl,” Pete says, because he doesn’t know which part is most important for Patrick to hear and he has to start somewhere. “The pictures are for you. Um, because I thought maybe I could use them to seduce you.”

“You asked me to critique them,” says Patrick.

“I asked you which was sexier,” Pete corrects. “I was—am—asking, do you think I’m sexy, do you want to do sex with me.”

Patrick is blinking unreadable. Pete is slowly, irreversibly, going mad.

“That’s not asking,” Patrick says. “I thought I was sick. Not just a bad friend but a full-on sex predator. Like, monstrous. Because the picture you showed me turned me on. Like, even more than just regularly being around you and being touched by you and the smell of you and your dumb fucking smile turn me on.”

“They were meant to turn you on,” says Pete. Then, because the pause between them stretches taut and inelastic and Pete doesn’t know where the pieces will fly at the moment of inevitable shatter, he asks, “Are you turned on now?”

Patrick blinks at him again. Self-conscious, Patrick bites his lip. In a voice that quavers, Patrick says, “I could be.”

So there’s that.

*

That low-golden kind of sex, coming that only begets more coming, orgasms that make you ache with memory, hungry instead of satisfied, like satiety is a country on a map you can’t even see, like trying to fit the name of god into a mortal mouth, incendiary bones stoked and stroked with tongues of licking lapping flame, the throbs of sparks from fanned embers, building with bodies a great pyre, the heights of heat to leap from, en flagrante, stuffing sensation into yourself til you laugh and curl and burn, unfurling, singed and crackling, luminous and dripping with juice, needing more begging more destroy me, desperate powerful obliteration, craving that cleaving kiss of a sword on the neck, of lover’s lips on that pulsepoint heartbeat swell that will unlock and unmake you.

That kind.

*

In a room in a hotel in Kansas City, curled together naked, wet, and flesh-heavy like too-ripe fruit sagging off a tree, they pass into something deeper and stiller than sleep. Having charted together conjugal annihilation, _la petite mort_ and the madness of two, they now slip someplace stranger, softer, further from the shores of themselves than they have ever been alone.

They fall asleep, maybe. Or they fall into each other, tumbling one after another down a rabbit hole that has a beginning but not an end. Or they fall in love.

Wherever it is, they fall there together.

*

“What happens next?” Patrick asks, one of the times they’re closer to awake than asleep. Pete’s hands are full of Patrick’s flanks, his smooth skin, his hips and his thighs. Pete’s hands are stroking everything in reach, like smoothing out the cloth of the sky to better see the sparkle of the stars, like spinning skin into gold, like Patrick is every precious thing and Pete can drink that in through his fingerprints, store up enough of Patrick to feel this whole, this content, always.

“Next?” Pete repeats. The concept of the world existing outside of this moment gives him a headrush. “We go to soundcheck. We play the show. I put my mouth against your throat so you vibrate my teeth when we sing Saturday, and we remember this moment—” Pete fits his mouth to the skin in question, Patrick’s breath catching like Pete’s closed his teeth around his friend’s windpipe—“and your knees get weak.”

Patrick laughs, a round and glorious post-fuck sort of laugh, one that curls up deep from a perfectly relaxed belly, spills like honey into the air. He wriggles against Pete, settling closer, the heatslick of their skin turning to cool, salt damp in their stillness. “Great, perfect, let’s do it,” he says, and the straightforward happiness of his tone soothes ragged edges Pete didn’t even know he had. “But I meant—are we telling the guys? Is this something that happens again? When we eat Indian food together, is it the same as it is now, or is it like, a date, and I should use napkins and try not to fart?”

Pete’s eyebrow hitches. “You mean you’re not even _trying_ not to fart? God, no wonder the van smells like that.”

Patrick is laughing, his eyes sparkling with tears. “Answer the question, Peter,” he insists between giggles.

Pete considers the question with affected theatricality. There’s nothing he wants more, has ever wanted, than to do this again, again, again. To scream _I love you_ from the top of his lungs and not fear who else hears him. The idea that Patrick wants to fight over a takeout container and the last piece of naan in a way that’s a _date_ makes his heart thrum sunlit. He can’t believe that after everything, it is the dick pic scheme that worked, that got him here: to the thing he wants most.

“Here’s the dilemma,” he says, his mouth moued in thought. “I want to tell everyone, megaphone loud, like I want to run onto the field before a Cubs game with your face painted on my chest, wearing a cape that says _PETE & PATRICK 4EVER. _ I definitely want to eat Indian food without your farts, and try the Lady and the Tramp thing with a samosa and eat one-handed because I don’t want to let go of you. I want do _this_ over and over til our pubis bones are so bruised our hips are at risk of shattering—want to fuck you and not stop til it’s a medical emergency. I want all of that. But also? I _really_ don’t want Joe to win the bet.”

“Wait. What bet?”

“The bet about whether we hook up on this tour or ‘spend another 3-5 years pining before exchanging a single tragic kiss,’ in Andy’s words.” Pete sighs. Joe, a man of low quality, will bet on anything. Equipped of a dogged, ruthless, insufferable accuracy, he almost always wins. Pete takes bets against Joe whenever possible, knowing he’s statistically very likely to lose, fueled by pure spite. Andy, on the other hand, makes bets like a poet or a playwright: long and elegant, more about the process than the outcome.

Patrick is visibly working himself up to some self-righteous indignation about being the subject of such a bet when a violent pounding on the door interrupts.

*

“Soundcheck is _now_!” Joe bellows on the other side of the door, alerting everyone in the entire hallway of this urgent news. Pete hops into boxers on his way to the door, opens it with his hickey-marked torso exposed and his head lost in a half-on hoodie, so that Joe can see his nipples but not his eyes. Patrick slithers deeper under the bedsheets, embarrassed by Pete’s lack of embarrassment.

Based on the conversation they were just having, Patrick assumes Pete will guard their privacy even a little bit, but this is a foolish and unfounded assumption: Pete throws the door wide enough for any and all guests of this hotel to view their indiscretions, and Joe _and_ Andy troop in. Their bandmates look from Pete, tousled and half-dressed, to the covers pulled up to Patrick’s bright-red chin, and exchange a Look.

Deductive reasoning fucks him over again. Patrick’s mouth tastes like Pete and the air smells like sex; it’s pretty obvious what they’ve been doing. Patrick, who has barely had time to figure out how _he_ feels about it yet, really would have preferred to brush his teeth and find his underwear prior to having a whole band meeting about it.

But then, this is Pete. His stupid, messy boy. Patrick doesn’t waste time being affronted or even surprised by the trademark Wentz lack of tact.

Andy pulls out his wallet with a grumble, passes a crumpled ten over to Joe. Personally, Patrick would have placed a higher dollar value on his virtue, but then, that kind of thinking is how you end up indentured to Joe Trohman.

“Can I put pants on before you creeps start exchanging dirty money over me?” he grouses. Pete throws himself onto the bed like a linebacker, burrowing shoulder-first into Patrick’s personal space in the exact way he always has.

“No pants ever again!” he declares, burying his nose under Patrick’s jaw.

“Is it gonna be like this all the time now?” Joe asks Andy with distaste.

Andy points out, “ _My_ bet was for slow, angsty, star-crossed lovers. You’re the one who engaged the hyperdrive with your dick pic suggestion. In many ways, this is _your_ fault.”

“Wait,” protests Patrick. He pushes Pete’s face out of his neck. “The dick pics were—a strategy? That was a _move_?”

“An elegant one. Trademark Joe Trohman,” says Joe.

Patrick talks over him. “You were _consulting_ about me? And that was the best you could come up with? Inventing a pretense to show me your penis and hoping I would be—like—overcome by lust? Are you fucking serious right now? What kind of raw sexual charisma do you think your penis has? Like, does it wear sunglasses and a leather jacket?”

“I think you’re being a little harsh on the strategy—”

Patrick, sitting up and forgetting to cover his bare chest in his ire, points a dangerously quivering finger at Joe. “Shut up. What I wanna know is, did it occur to any of you _genuises_ that Pete could just, I don’t know— _ask me out_?”

There’s silence in the hotel room.

Finally, Pete asks sheepishly, “Would that have worked?”

“I cannot believe how stupid you are,” Patrick says. “Now get out of my hotel room, brain trust, unless you all wanna see my junk too.”

Joe and Andy file out and Patrick mutters to himself, relishing the opportunity for grumpiness, as he collects his clothes from where they’ve fallen all around the room. Pete, still sprawled on the bed, watches him with a rare kind of contented stillness.

“Patrick?” he asks as Patrick pulls a stick of deodorant out of his backpack and swipes it on, hoping to cover up the smell of travel and sex, as they’re out of time to shower.

“Yeah?”

“Will you go out with me?”

Pete’s smiling, all hope and teeth.

“Hmm. Can I see a picture of your dick first? I like to inspect the merchandise before I commit, so the dick pic is the real decision-maker in these scenarios,” Patrick says.

Pete’s smile turns into a frown. “C’mon, for real. Will you?”

Patrick comes over to the bed, kneels on the mattress, leans towards Pete. They meet eyes, Patrick on his knees and Pete on his back, a pose that is pleasantly physical with memory. “I will,” says Patrick. “But only to teach you a valuable lesson about the power of direct communication.”

Pete kisses him, an urgent swipe of tongue that he learned not an hour ago makes Patrick’s knees give. He pulls back as suddenly as he started, this grin on his face like he knows exactly how much power he has over Patrick from here on out.

Patrick is so fucked.

“Is that the _only_ reason?” Pete purrs. Clearly, he thinks he’s sexy.

Patrick cannot allow him to go on thinking so. He smacks Pete on the shoulder and leaps off the bed. “Yes,” he insists. “Can’t believe you let me think I was a pervert _this whole time_ ,” he adds in a grumble.

Pete, finally rolling out of bed, scoffs, “YOU! What about ME! You’ve got this fucking _BJ mouth_ , you’re _always sweaty_ , you let me hang all over you and I can _feel_ your heart speed up and then you push me away—”

“You think I’m confusing? Mr. Stage Gay actually thinks _I’m_ confusing? Tell you what you are, you’re _confused_.”

They bicker their way out the door, towards the parking lot where Joe and Andy will be waiting in the van. It is companionable, comfortable grumpiness, the same way they always are when they’re together any length of time. As they move down the hall, Pete’s pinkie finger hooks Patrick’s where their hands hang at their sides. Even that’s not different from what Pete might have done on any other day.

“Is everything going to change now?” Patrick asks, voice quiet because he’s not sure what he wants the answer to be. He wants to feel like he has free will, that this was something other than inevitable; he wants the world to be rocked off its axis and stars to collide; he doesn’t want anything to change, because change scares him. He wants everything all at once.

He wants Pete.

“Oh, yes,” Pete assures him. It sounds like Pete knows exactly what answer he wants. That’s comforting, somehow. Patrick is actually _comforted_ by the thought that at least Pete Wentz knows what he wants. “You’ll see. Every good thing is going to be yours, Patrick. Starting with me.” He smudges a wet, messy kiss against Patrick’s neck, making Patrick’s stomach curl up and his nerves shudder low, right to the head of his cock. He’s going to be hard again before they even get onstage, he realizes. Maybe there will be time after soundcheck, a dark corner somewhere…

Dark corners before soundcheck—that’s different, earth-rocking, never-been-done-before. And this: Pete calling himself a good thing. A good thing for Patrick. That’s new too.

Patrick twists his pinkie, catches Pete’s whole hand. He interlaces their fingers and they walk that way, both collared in hickeys and smelling like sex-rumpled sweat, not caring who sees them, not caring if they’re fledgling-famous or not. Hand-in-hand, they step out into bright Midwest sunlight. That night, they play a damn good show.

 

_end_


End file.
